


Extremely tedious?

by jenniewrennie13



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Bullying, Cinnamon Roll Newt Scamander, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, House Elves, Hurt/Comfort, Moral Ambiguity, Newt does his best, Pre-Canon, Sort of Stockholm Syndrome?, Yes I know there are OCs but it’s mainly Newt being a sweetheart I promise, Young Newt Scamander, indoctrination, the whole house-elves thing is just a bit dodgy really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-28 01:55:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18201926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenniewrennie13/pseuds/jenniewrennie13
Summary: Most days in the Office for House-Elf Relocation were extremely tedious.Very occasionally, the tedium was broken. These are the stories of those days.Those days were the reason that despite the job being literally the embodiment of his worst nightmare, Newt stuck it out.





	Extremely tedious?

**Author's Note:**

> Hey people! Thanks for the awesome comments on my first fic!
> 
> This one's a bit different in tone from 'Persuasion', so I'll be interested to hear what you think! If you guys want to see it I might continue the storyline in this piece or add more one-shots about the goings-on in my interpretation of the OFHER.
> 
> Also, can we all just get some appreciation for the fact that Newt Scamander literally lived his boggart, full time, for two entire years? Just after the whole Leta and expulsion trauma? Aged seventeen? #notonlygryffindorsarebrave
> 
> CW, PLEASE READ!: Not entirely sure if this counts as a reference to suicidal thoughts, but this story features a house-elf who is initially very attached to the idea of being killed in the name of family honour. Please be careful and look after yourself if this is likely to be a trigger for you.

The people who worked in the Office for House Elf Relocation were a miscellaneous bunch, but they were united by one thing.

None of them wanted to be there.

There was the boss, Elias Dravester, a former auror demoted years ago for undue violence whom, in their infinite wisdom, the Ministry had sent to work with the most vulnerable beings in magical society. There was Anna, a nervous, bookish witch, ridiculously overqualified, who’d nevertheless been refused every other position she’d applied for (probably unfairly: Anna was short for Annalise and even in the wizarding world a German family background and slight accent did not endear you to employers with the political climate as it was). There was Laetitia, who treated the house elves like glorified pets (‘oh we must find a lovely home for this one, poor little darling’), but whose interest in them never lasted longer than the five minutes it took to read the file.

And then there was Newt Scamander.

Who’d taken a job that was literally the embodiment of his worst nightmare. His desk even looked exactly like his boggart, for Merlin’s sake, he’d stared at it for a good five minutes on his first day before gathering the courage to just sit down, earning the first of many odd looks from his colleagues. He’d agreed to it because it was the only one Theseus could wrangle for him and because he didn’t fancy not taking it and thus risking being disowned by his family on top of being expelled from Hogwarts.

If the job actually involved day-to-day interactions with house-elves, Newt wouldn’t have minded it so much. He’d been great friends with the Scamander family house-elves, Hilpy and Toker, when he was growing up, and seeing them and the hippogriffs remained the best part of his infrequent visits home. But generally the work was simply writing up notices for available elves and families, or charming copies of contracts for transfers and proofreading them, and if there was one thing Newt absolutely could not stand, it was proofreading (which was to cause many grey hairs for his editors in the future). Even worse were the interactions with the wizards who were buying or selling house elves. Not only did this involve attempting to converse with other humans (Merlin forbid!), but he was also expected to be charming and pleasant to the rich pure-blood house-elf owners who might then be persuaded to sponsor other Ministry projects.

Dravester had been thoroughly disappointed when he first met Newt: when he heard he was getting a Scamander, he had immediately started hatching plans of securing favour through pure-blood connections and eventually getting out of the job he hated.  Unfortunately for him, this Scamander was socially awkward, refused to look anyone in the eye, could be downright rude whenever anyone made a perfectly reasonable remark about punishing house-elves, and despite having some good connections, was desperately trying to sever them all. Therefore Newt was on the receiving end of even more than the usual hate from his boss, as if being imprisoned behind a desk wasn’t bad enough.

They did have house-elves in the office from time to time: sometimes just for a short while when Dravester was performing a bonding ritual, sometimes for longer when elves ended up between families and needed somewhere to stay for a few days. The elves in these circumstances were often subdued, doing their best to please their temporary masters and saddened by leaving their old family. Whenever they had anyone staying in the tiny partitioned room that served as their elf quarters, Newt would get even more behind on his paperwork than usual and make it a mission to go in there and cheer them up, until Dravester found him and berated him back to his desk. When soft blankets and cushions appeared alongside the scratchy ministry-issue blankets in the elf quarters, after a thorough interrogation to make sure that no ministry funds had been spent on them, Dravester reluctantly let it pass. Scamander insisted he had no idea where they’d come from, but he was a terrible liar. In the manager’s not so humble opinion, if the poor foolish excuse for a wizard wanted to waste his family’s money on needlessly coddling the servants, that was his own loss. Some good old-fashioned teasing ought to toughen him up though, so Dravester made a point of needling Scamander about his bleeding heart at every possible juncture.

All in all, it was not what seventeen-year-old Newt Scamander would call his ideal existence. Dravester wasn’t a particularly imaginative bully, so even the insults got monotonous after a few weeks. However, during his time there, every now and then something happened that reminded him why he hadn’t just thrown caution, financial security and his family’s approval to the winds and run away to a jungle on the other side of the world…yet.

One such incident happened about six months after Newt’s appointment to the job. He was alone in the office he shared with Laetitia and Anna (Dravester had his own), recopying a contract because he’d messed it up through absent-mindedness the first time, when the sounds of a commotion came from outside and Anna rushed in, out of breath.

“Laetitia’s just come in from the estate pickup and she’s got a real wailer, and it’s making boss angry- well, angri _er_ \- please, Newt, can you-?” She made a vague hand gesture to suggest _deal with it please?,_ but it was unnecessary, as Newt was already leaping up, knocking his chair over and dislodging the recopied contracts in the process.

“On my way,” he replied as he sprinted out, trying not to look too gleeful about the temporary reprieve from paperwork. His glee disappeared abruptly when he came upon the scene in the corridor. A house-elf was clinging to Dravester’s leg like a limpet, bawling at the top of her lungs and seemingly impervious to his increasingly frustrated silencing spells and attempts to beat her off with his cane. Laetitia was standing to one side, flapping her hands ineffectively and trying her best to calm the elf, but was really just adding to the noise with her fruitless shushing and “darling, there’s no need for all this fuss, don’t cry” and similar empty phrases.

“Sir!” Newt cried, striding over to the group. “Please, I can handle this.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can, _Saint Scamander,”_ Dravester shouted over the racket. “Ready to bestow your mercy on some snivelling scum, are you?”

Dravester, unfortunately, was not the first bully Newt had encountered. He had practice enough to know not to rise to the bait.

“I’d like to help, if you’ll let me, sir,” he said quietly, looking down and avoiding eye contact. Dravester was just a typical alpha predator- he could be malleable as long as he believed he’d won and proved his power.

“Go on then, get it off my leg if you think you’re so clever. It’s getting snot all over my new trousers, wretched thing.”

Newt quickly Summoned a cushion and asked for the name.

“Kelton,” Laetitia chipped in, desperate to be helpful. “The Kelton estate.”

“No, not the family, the elf,” he corrected. He’d have asked the elf herself but at this point, nothing was going to filter through her distress but her name and a firm command. Laetitia started fumbling through the file and Newt rolled his eyes. She seemed to be under the impression that ‘darling’ worked fine as a universal title for elves so learning names was a pointless exercise. Dravester narrowed his eyes at the cushion.

“Hold on Scamander, that’s not one of your charity rags, that’s from the guest suite!” (It was an average office with a desk and some comfy chairs where they received clients. Dravester called it the guest suite.) Newt shrugged. He’d just Summoned the nearest one.

“If the elf sits on it and I have to replace it, it’s coming out of your wages,” Dravester boomed, shaking his leg viciously. Newt sighed but didn’t bother to replace the cushion, because it couldn’t really make much difference to the pittance they paid him anyway, and he had more important concerns, as Laetitia cried out triumphantly, “Primsy!”, which at least made the elf look up before she started howling again, this time even louder.

“Primsy,” Newt called, taking a firm tone, commanding but not aggressive. “Come over here and sit on the cushion.”

The sobbing didn’t let up, but she slowly detached herself from Dravester’s leg and made her way over to Newt. Dravester tried to Silence her again from behind, but her elven magic must have overridden it, because she simply glanced back at him balefully and cried louder still as she sat down.

“Take a deep breath in,” Newt instructed as he crouched down so as not to loom over her. She did so, noisily and wetly.

“Now let it out.” She did so, the outbreath punctuated by a long and lusty wail. He could feel the eyes of his colleagues behind him and absently made shooing motions with one hand.

“We will be having words about respect for your superiors, Scamander,” Dravester threatened as he retreated to his office.

“Yes, I’m sure we will, sir,” he responded, his exasperated tone making Primsy snort through her tears. It was probably a good thing that Dravester was too busy slamming his door to notice this.

“Now, Primsy, I want you to take another deep breath, in and out, -yes?” There was an insistent tapping, light and quick, on his shoulder and he twisted round to see Laetitia just behind him.

“I’m leaving the file here, Newt,” she informed him, depositing it on the floor with highly excessive theatricality.

He thanked her quietly and went back to coaching Primsy’s breathing, but Laetitia hovered a little, cooing over the elf and obviously overwhelming her.

“Laetitia, would you mind?” Newt ground out eventually, making shooing motions again and trying not to get irritated, or at least not let his irritation show to Primsy.

“Oh, of course! I’ll see you later, dearies,” she said cheerily as she ruffled Newt’s hair, apparently oblivious to the scowl and flinch this provoked, before heading back to the office. He had tried to explain on previous occasions that just because he was the youngest there, it did not entitle her to treat him as though he were five, and she’d listened with a serious expression, nodding along in agreement, before patting him and saying “of course, sweetie, of course.” After several repetitions of this, he’d given up.

However, finally minus a tyrant of a boss and an irritating colleague, Newt could get on with doing what he did best: taking a lost and hurting creature and helping to improve their situation. He turned his full attention back to Primsy.

“That’s a lot better, isn’t it? Now, nice slow breath in through your nose. And breathe out through your mouth. Good. Do you think you can keep doing that?”

Primsy nodded, full of determination through her tears. Newt beamed at her.

“Marvellous. Carry on like that for as long as you need.”

And then there was blessed calm after the chaos. Newt got himself settled cross-legged opposite Primsy’s cushion, giving her a few moments to cry herself out. There were a few lumps and bruises starting to form where Dravester’s cane had struck her, and more than ever before, he wondered if the satisfaction of hexing his boss into oblivion would be worth the inevitable price of braving Theseus’ ire. He wanted desperately to heal her, but that would probably spook her so he restrained himself, and simply summoned his handkerchief from his coat pocket where it hung near the door, along with a glass from their cupboard which he filled with water from his wand. He passed them over to Primsy once her sobs had turned into sniffles but that just made her break out into fresh tears as she stammered out,

“Th-thank you, kind m-master! P-Primsy is g-grateful to you, s-sir!”

“Not at all, Primsy, it’s no trouble. And my name is Newt.”

“Thank you, master Newt!” she hiccupped as she dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“That’s quite alright. May I touch you? Just a gesture of comfort, that’s all. And that’s really your choice, if it will make you feel worse, just say no and I won’t. That’s fine too.”

She nodded somewhat hesitantly, and he smiled and lightly rubbed her spindly upper arm, watching her relax under his touch. “We’ll work this out, Primsy, you and me, don’t you worry.” He withdrew his hand, not wanting to be invasive or overwhelm her and waited for her to glug down the water before he spoke again. He really didn’t want to spark another meltdown, but on the other hand, they needed to address what had just happened. The fact that Primsy had been blatantly ignoring Dravester’s commands to “get off me!” meant that her magic hadn’t accepted the Ministry as her temporary master- _smart move, girl,_ Newt thought, _wish I could say the same_ \- but though this could theoretically happen, he hadn’t seen it before and he needed to work out why. Primsy set down the glass and Newt steeled himself for the hard part. He was better with nonverbal creatures, on the whole, but he could deal with house-elves. At least, in general, they were honest about their feelings- they possessed barely any of the dissonance between body language and words, the lies and masks, which made other humans such an enigma to him.

“Do you think you could tell me what had you so upset? If you need more time, that’s alright,” he added hastily as her bulbous eyes started to well with tears yet again.

“You peoples is trying to replace my mistress,” she sobbed accusingly.

“Are we now?” Newt replied, frowning, reaching for the file which- he admitted begrudgingly- Laetitia had quite helpfully left for him. “Let me have a look and see what’s happening with you, alright?”

He flicked through the file. Kelton family, last remaining member of the principal bloodline, Delia Kelton, died of old age last week, with no direct heirs and specifically excluding the distant cousins from inheriting anything. No special provisions were made for the house-elf- disappointing, really, when the elf was clearly so attached to her mistress- which meant that it was the OFHER’s job to find her a new family to serve. They were, in short, trying to replace her mistress. Newt ran a hand distractedly through his hair. Merlin, this was going to be a headache.

“What is it about maybe getting a new master or mistress that you don’t like?” he ventured tentatively. He needed to understand precisely why she was distressed: scared of mistreatment at the hands of a new owner (justifiably, Newt thought with a wince); she was the one-in-a-million who actually wanted freedom; or, most likely…

“Primsy was born to serve Kelton family. Primsy cannot serve another. It would bring shame on poor Primsy’s head. Primsy’s mother has served masters and mistresses Kelton, and her grandmother, and her great-grandmother, and her great-great-grandmother…”

Family pride. Curse traditional pure-bloods and their indoctrination of their entire households. Newt was aware that was hypocritical, but he would happily include the Scamanders in that as well. He’d always been respectful of house elves, unusually for someone of his background, but he’d had a few naïve assumptions about how the government treated them, fostered by his parents, which had been shattered by the indifferent cruelty he witnessed working for OFHER.

“Alright, Primsy, I’m hearing you,” he cut her off before she could continue the genealogy, feeling guilty for interrupting but aware that he only had so long before his boss stormed out and gave him a tongue-lashing for loitering in the corridor, where, Merlin forbid, some pure-blood snob coming in for an appointment about house-elves might actually be forced to see one. He licked his lips nervously. “But the thing is, there aren’t any more Keltons to serve, and you don’t want a new master or mistress, so what do you think should happen now?”

“Primsy should be beheaded so’s her head is mounted on the wall of Kelton Manor and she is remembered in honour with her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother…”

Of course the Keltons were the worst type of traditionalists who would carry on with that barbaric practice. And of course Primsy had been raised to believe the entire twisted philosophy behind it.

“Oh, Primsy,” he sighed, at a loss for words. “Would you like a hug?”

She peered at him in confusion. “That is a strange question to ask of a house-elf, master Newt.”

He shrugged helplessly. “I’m a strange man, Primsy. I’d like to hug you, but only if you want to, though. That’s important.”

A little warily, she rose from the cushion and picked her way over to him. Very carefully and avoiding her bruises, he gently gathered her into his arms and brought her to rest against his shoulder, fighting his own tears because he was a cog in the great machine that ended up with sentient creatures believing that their only purpose was to end up a head on someone’s wall.

The worst thing was, if Delia Kelton had ordered that her house-elf be beheaded when she died, OFHER would have been obliged to do it, whether the elf in question wanted it or not. It made him queasy just to think about it, and he categorically knew that he’d quit and risk the family’s displeasure rather than carry that out if it came to it. He’d made this, along with some of his other more unorthodox views, clear to Anna, the only one of his colleagues he found vaguely tolerable, despite her slightly more old-fashioned views on the treatment of house-elves. He’d come in some mornings to find her hastily switching files between their desks and being very vague about why. He knew she had probably saved his job and what remained of his social standing multiple times by now, and he was very grateful, but still it made him shudder to think about what the nervous academically minded witch he worked with might have done for the sake of his conscience. He had never had to deal with the Malfoys, for instance, and he was fairly sure that was Anna’s doing.

But, mercifully, Delia Kelton had included no references in her will to her house-elf at all, save as number eighteen in a list of significant items in the mansion. He hoped that was because she wanted Primsy to have a long and happy life with another family, and that it wasn’t simply an oversight, but somehow he doubted that was the case.

“Master Newt?” Primsy startled him from his thoughts by drawing back a little and gazing at him with those soulful eyes. “Permission to ask a question, sir?”

“You always have permission to ask me any question you like, whenever you like. I’m here to help you,” he told her earnestly.

“Why is you sad, sir?”

_Here’s your chance, Newt. Don’t mess it up._

“I’m sad, Primsy, because you are a wonderful and talented young house-elf, and you have a great future ahead of you, but you don’t think that you deserve that future, even though you do. You’ve been taught to think that the Keltons are the only source of honour, but they’re not, and it would be a terrible shame if that got in your way.”

“You…you is sad because of _Primsy,_ sir?” Primsy squeaked, scrambling off Newt’s lap and bowing. “Sir, Primsy is sorry, so sorry. Primsy will punish herself if you wish.”

_Well done, Newton. Your average success rate with an emotional interaction there._

“No, Primsy, don’t punish yourself, please. That’s not what I meant at all,” Newt backtracked quickly. “You’ve not _made_ me sad, it’s not your fault, it’s just that I’m sad _for_ you. Of course you believe what you’ve been told about family honour, you can’t help that, but I’m sad because no-one ever told you that what you do is beautiful and good no matter who you do it for. Does that make sense?” 

“I must be honest with a master. That does not make sense to Primsy at all.”

Newt chuckled in resignation, “I suppose it doesn’t. A lot of things don’t make sense to me either. I’m sorry I’m not the best at explaining things. Anyway, we’re going to need to hide from my boss in a few minutes, and we have some quarters here where you can stay for a while. They’re not the largest, mind, but for a few days they’ll do. Could we keep talking there?”

“As the master wishes,” Primsy chirped happily, and let Newt lead her by the hand to their temporary elf hostel (a converted cleaning cupboard). He also picked up the cushion, assuming that Dravester wouldn’t use it now the ‘lesser race’ had tarnished it- honestly, whoever had put that man in charge of house-elves must be the biggest moron in the Ministry, and that was a much-contested title. And even if he did take it out of Newt’s salary, Newt had been meaning to add something else to the elves’ quarters for a while now, so it had just saved him going out and buying something. Once there, he led her to one of the four booths and motioned her in, depositing the cushion next to her and telling her, “it’s all yours.”

“All for Primsy?” she gasped, looking around the tiny space in awe, and Newt swallowed painfully around the lump in his throat.

“All for Primsy,” he agreed, settling himself on the floor again.

“Primsy was the last of the Kelton elves, but when we was little we was sleeping three to a nest like this,” she informed him enthusiastically and he did his best to smile and swore to himself that he would do whatever he could to match her with a family that gave their house-elves decent living space. It was very difficult to judge from the scant information they were given- usually it was about requirements for the house-elf rather than the family itself- but sometimes you could get a sense of where they stood from it. He hadn’t noticed when he had started thinking of Laetitia’s case as his own, but he knew now that he was going to finish this.

“Well, you just enjoy this while you’re here then,” he hedged, hating that he couldn’t promise that she’d never be crowded like that again.

“Master Newt,” she ventured again, “May I-”

“Ask, go on,” he encouraged her, knowing that it would take her a while to realise that she didn’t need permission to ask him questions.

“What will happen to Primsy now?”

Well, wasn’t that the killer. By law, she would have to go to someone else: the Ministry couldn’t just behead an elf because the elf asked for it, thank Merlin for small mercies, but that still meant that she would be handed off to someone else like so much baggage, whether she wanted it or not. From what he’d seen so far, if she could get over outliving the Keltons, she probably would want to serve someone else; Newt might float the idea of Dumbledore’s connections and a more…unorthodox… arrangement, but if he did, he would have to do that very carefully so as not to insult her if she didn’t want that and thereby lose her trust. Essentially, this was going to be a very delicate conversation and Newt did not have the best of track records with those.

“Let’s work through that, shall we?” he said with a confidence he didn’t feel. “Did Lady Kelton tell you anything about what would happen after she died?”

Primsy got a little teary for the umpteenth time. “She said that Primsy is her loyal servant and is always going to be at her side, just like my foremothers were to her ancestors!”

Of all the ridiculous and romanticised things to say…really, Lady Kelton? Surely she knew Primsy was going to outlive her. Or perhaps she genuinely had no idea about house-elf lifespans. Newt tried not to let his frustration show.

“Well, you were always by her side, right until she died, which I think makes you a very loyal servant. Did you like serving her?”

Newt watched her carefully. House-elves couldn’t speak ill of their masters, so here was one of the only situations in which they behaved somewhat more like humans, their body language saying what their words did not.

“Oh, yes, sir! She was a very kind mistress and Primsy knows all the things she likes and when Primsy thinks of something before she asks for it sometimes,” she drew herself up as if about to impart a great secret. Newt instinctively leaned forward. “She even says ‘thank you.’”

She was entirely committed to her words, her eyes wide and sincere, nodding as if she expected Newt to disbelieve her.

Sometimes, Newt really hated wizards.

He floundered for a few moments, with no idea of how he was supposed to respond to that, but Primsy’s face crumpled and she started to sob again.

“I miss her so much!”

“Oh Primsy, sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” he murmured as he wrapped a blanket around her and hugged her in to his side. He wasn’t quite sure where the ‘sweetheart’ had come from; maybe Laetitia was rubbing off on him. Now there was a terrifying thought. He had used the endearment with her name rather than as a lazy substitute for it though, and it felt very right in the situation. He also felt terrible that he’d been so focused on the issues around her future that he’d completely neglected the fact that she’d just lost one of the most important figures in her life so far and she was grieving. _You need to think about how other people feel too,_ he heard his mother lecture in his head, from one of the multiple times when a beast he had adopted had destroyed something precious to someone else. That was one of the complicated things that he’d hoped would just sort itself out in his head when he became an adult. But it turned out that things just got even more confusing instead.

None of that mattered now, though, because he had a distraught house-elf sobbing into his robes and very little idea where to go from here. Earlier, he’d immediately identified the panic-fear-overwhelmed response that he’d seen before in wild beasts, and he knew how to deal with that, but this was grief-induced crying and that was much harder to deal with. Laetitia would probably hush her and tell her not to cry, so Newt’s instincts were to do the opposite. You were supposed to let bereaved people cry, weren’t you? He settled for rubbing her back in the way his kneazle liked and hoping it worked on house-elves too, while he thought through his next steps. She couldn’t be beheaded anyway, but he wanted to try to talk her out of the idea so she could at least begin to accept that she could move on and maybe be happy again.

“M-master Newt is too kind to Primsy,” she sniffled as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose with a loud honk on his handkerchief.

“Nonsense, it’s perfectly alright to be sad when you’ve lost someone important to you and I’m glad if I could help. And I think you’re very kind, too.”

Primsy couldn’t articulate more than a wordless squeal of gratitude at that, and she hugged Newt’s arm tightly. _You can’t get attached,_ he told himself firmly, even as that melted his heart a little. It was probably already too late, anyway. Not getting attached wasn’t really a strong point of Newt’s.

“From what you told me earlier, it sounds like you’re very thoughtful and you like making people happy. Is that right?” he pressed on, hoping that his strategy for combating the Keltons’ brainwashing would work.

“Primsy lives to serve, sir,” she confirmed earnestly, and Newt knew then that ‘the Dumbledore Option’, as he mentally termed it, would only distress her. He hadn’t come to a conclusion yet about whether in general house-elves’ servile behaviour was innate or socialised or both, but he knew enough to identify to what individuals wanted for themselves, and to provide that when it was in his power.

“Well, you see, I think Mistress Delia knew that,” _at least I hope she did,_ he added mentally, _I hope she knew what a beautiful person she occasionally remembered to thank,_ “and she knew that it would be a great tragedy if you didn’t get the chance to keep on serving and being your lovely thoughtful self. You’d be wasted on a wall, quite frankly.”

“But there are no Keltons left for Primsy to serve, sir,” she insisted stubbornly. This was the going to be the hard bit.

“Mistress Delia knew that would happen, too,” Newt continued, _and didn’t bother to even prepare you at all for that,_ “and in her will she decided that it would be better for you to serve someone else once she was gone,” _by default, but still,_ “and I’m sure you want to follow her last order, don’t you?”

“But she said Primsy was to always serve her, master Newt!” she wailed in despair.

“I think,” Newt said carefully, terrified that he was about to put his foot in it as usual, “that maybe she meant always for her, not always for you.”

“Oh,” Primsy said miserably, “then master Newt really is trying to replace mistress.”

“No, not replace her, not exactly,” he replied quickly. _Aren’t you?_ his conscience nagged at him. “I’m sure you’ll always have a special place in your heart for mistress Delia, and you’ll always remember her. But I can see you’ve got a very big heart, so do you think you might have room in there for a different master or mistress as well as your memories of her?”

“Primsy is to be shamed by serving another then, sir?” she asked, gazing up at him mournfully.

“No,” he said firmly. “The only shame would be if a kind and hard-working house-elf thought her life had to end because her mistress’ did. There is no shame in doing what you love.”

If only he could convince his family of that. But that wasn’t the issue here.

“But the mistress and Primsy’s parents always said it was the greatest dishonour to answer to a master who was not a Kelton,” she fretted.

“I’m sure they did, but they must have meant when there were living Keltons to serve,” Newt replied, getting a little desperate now, “otherwise why would mistress Delia have left it so that you would go to someone else? She wouldn’t dishonour someone who served her so well.”

Primsy nodded along, clearly trying to grapple with these new concepts. “Mistress wanted Primsy to serve another?” she clarified, peering up at Newt suspiciously. He nodded, his throat tight.

“Then Primsy must,” she nodded decisively. “Primsy must bear the shame for mistress’ sake.”

“It’s not shameful,” he repeated, feeling like a broken record. “But it might take a while for you to realise that, and that’s okay.”

“Newt?” It was Anna, poking her head around the door. “Just to let you know, boss is already on the warpath, erm, obvious reasons, Laetitia was just coming out of his office and I overheard him saying that if he found you loitering in here, he’d have you doing everyone’s proofreading for the next month, so maybe you might want to…” she gestured back to the office. Newt sighed heavily.

“Thanks for the warning, Anna,” he smiled. “I’ll be there in two minutes. I don’t suppose you could…” Apparently Anna correctly interpreted his vague hand gestures as ‘distract him’, since she said, “I’ll try. But be quick,” before she left. Perhaps the reason they were the only two people in the office who could actually stand each other was a mutual fondness for finishing sentences with hand gestures, Newt mused as he pushed himself to his feet.

“I have to go now, Primsy, but I’ll come and see you when I can escape. I don’t know how often that will be though.”

“Master Newt should not get in trouble for Primsy’s sake!” she scolded him sternly, reminding him a little of how Hilpy used to lecture him when he was little.

“I’ll try not to. Oh! I’m so sorry, you’re still bruised from earlier. May I heal you? I should have offered ages ago.”

“Primsy was disobeying her masters. Primsy does not deserve healing.”

“Oh yes Primsy does,” Newt replied. “Hold on, does that mean your magic recognises the Ministry as your temporary master now? And could you ignore my boss earlier because you were somehow still bonded to the Keltons- because their will was unclear and you were convinced that you had to die with them?” She nodded.

“Well, he wasn’t technically your master at the time then, and also, he’s an arse.” Primsy clapped her hands to her mouth and let out a shocked giggle. “Please let me heal you?” She gave a tentative nod and allowed Newt to cast healing spells over the lumps and welts from Dravester’s cane, then thanked him enthusiastically.

“One last question,” he said once she was comfortably settled in her nest again. “If your magic wasn’t recognising the ministry earlier, why did you listen to me?”

She shrugged. “Primsy isn’t sure, sir. But master Newt has the aura of a good master who deserves to be served.”

She meant it as a compliment. Still, that wasn’t an unequivocally comforting thing to hear.

 “Well, er, thank you Primsy, very much. I’ll see you as soon as I can.”

“Thank you, master Newt!”

He darted through into the adjoining office, and managed to slide into his seat and grab his quill, accidentally upending his inkpot just as Dravester and Anna walked in.

Dravester made his way over to Newt’s desk, one disapproving eyebrow raised as he stood there observing the spilled ink pooling out across the table, his stillness a powerful contrast to Newt’s hurried attempts to move his papers out of the way.

“ScamanDisaster strikes again,” he remarked eventually, a smug grin on his face. Newt really didn’t understand what there was to be proud of about using the same insult for six months, but Dravester certainly seemed happy with himself. He Vanished the ink with a flick of his wand, an assertion of his power more than an attempt to help.

“Where are tomorrow’s contracts, Scamander?”

“Erm, well, somewhere in here, give me a moment.” He frantically rifled through the papers on his desk, then remembered he’d knocked them to the floor earlier and bent down to pick them up.

“Not giving you enough desk space are we? You do so much work that you’re being compelled to use the floor? This your way of angling for that spot in my office, eh?”

“Believe me, Mr Dravester,” he said as he handed the contracts over, “I do not want your job.”

“Well you’re not a threat to it, that’s for certain,” he scoffed as he straightened out the crumpled parchment. “And there’s only half of them here, where are the others?”

“Not quite finished yet sir, I’ll have them to you by midday.”

“If I find out you’ve been wasting time moping with that little wailing menace in the cupboard…”

“She’s not a little wailing menace,” Newt argued, unwisely, but he couldn’t help himself. “Her name is Primsy and did you know her mistress hadn’t told her a thing about what was going to happen to her? She thought she had to die with her family! Her magic was still bound to the Keltons! If that situation had carried on until the Keltons’ residual magic faded it would have killed her!”

Dravester slammed his palms down onto Newt’s desk, leaning over him intimidatingly.

“The problem with that being? It would have saved us a job.”

Newt thought he had got used to this man’s casual cruelty, but it appeared that he could always go one better.

“And killed a house elf who didn’t deserve to die! And it won’t have to bother you, you won’t even have to think about it, I’ll deal with the case.”

All three people in the office turned to stare at Newt. He squirmed in discomfort under their scrutiny, wondering if hiding under his desk was a viable option. (He did, in fact, resort to that later in his time at OFHER, unknowing that one day he’d be bonding over hiding-under-desk stories with his future wife.) Dravester laughed, completely devoid of humour.

“Well, well, well, I never thought I’d see the day. Scamander volunteering, I repeat, volunteering for extra paperwork. I don’t know who you are, but if you’re using Polyjuice because you actually want to pass for Scamander, then you’re a bigger fool than he is.”

“I’ll take the case,” Newt said softly.

“That’s really sweet of you, darling, but it’s alright, I’ve got it sorted. There’s a vacancy at the Malfoys I was considering,” Laetitia called from her desk and Newt clenched his fists under his desk so tightly that his nails dug into his palms.

“I will take the case,” he repeated louder. “Please, Laetitia, I want to deal with this one.”

Laetitia shrugged uncertainly and looked to Dravester, whilst Anna had ducked her head and gone back to scribbling furiously, sensibly attempting to stay out of it.

“You can’t keep her, you know. If you have her lingering for longer than necessary because ‘you can’t find anywhere suitable,’ I’ll know what your game is.”

“I know that, sir. I still want to do it.”

“Well, they say don’t look a gift hippogriff in the beak. Might as well make the most of this unprecedented enthusiasm while it lasts, so do what you like. But mark my words, Scamander, if you turn in any of your other work a single second late, the case is going straight back to Vanier, got that?”

“Thank you, sir,” Newt answered, letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

“Contracts by midday, Scamander. Get yourself a new ink pot and sign for it so I know whose pay to dock, I’ll know if you don’t. I know your tricks.” he finished threateningly, pushing his face uncomfortably close to Newt’s.

“Yes, sir,” he gritted out, and then mercifully Dravester huffed and strode out of the office. Newt was left with a pile of those detested contracts and a fast-approaching deadline. _For Primsy_ , he thought, knowing that if he messed up she’d probably end up with the Malfoys, and applied himself to his paperwork with a diligence he didn’t know he had.


End file.
